Spotlight

In the Kingdom of Dior

Of all the couture houses in Paris, the plum is Christian Dior. Perhaps it’s the symbolism, the way the house blossomed from nothing in 1947, in the wake of World War II. Or that its debut line, Corolle, reimagined women as flowers and suddenly the Western world was a garden of bell shapes and full skirts, with women loving the way they looked and felt in Dior’s deep curves formed from yards and yards of silk. It was a profound moment that lasted 10 years—a dec­ade, then, in which Dior was the king of fashion and his business empire accounted for a healthy percentage of France’s export revenue. Since Dior’s death, in 1957, the appointment of every successive house designer has seemed an affair of state—1957: Yves Saint Laurent; 1960: Marc Bohan; 1989: Gianfranco Ferré; 1996: John Galliano; 2012: Raf Simons.

It is said that Monsieur Dior could hear an apple ripen on a tree. Would he ever have guessed that a man who began his career in industrial design would take over the garden of earthly delights that is Dior? Simons left interior design because working alone didn’t suit him—he preferred the esprit de corps of collaboration. In 1995 he began designing men’s wear in his native Belgium, and in 2005 he was hired to re-invigorate Jil Sander. Command, control, process, thought. His shows became famous for their pin-drop quiet and the soft, rapturous rain of cameras clicking. Forget nostalgia, vintage sighs, and postmodern appropriation. Simons is a modernist with a love of the new—and the cultural map to find it. “I never would make direct references,” he has said. No. He produces beautiful clothes that have never been seen before. And now, at 44, he has Dior, along with its imposing archive of archetypes. Bernard Arnault, chairman and C.E.O. of LVMH, has said Simons was the only man for the job. His debut on July 2 took place throughout several rooms of an hôtel particulier wallpapered with a million flowers—roses, delphiniums, peonies, and orchids. The gesture was not lost on the guests: embellishment was on the walls, not the dresses. But glowing, growing from within Simons’s curvilinear gowns and jackets were the rounded volumes of Corolle—so light, so pure, so full of the future.

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